Ronnie O’Sullivan has been looking ahead to the World Snooker Championship (Image: Getty)
Ronnie O’Sullivan has revealed that he thought about pulling out of this year’s World Snooker Championship due to anxiety. The seven-time Crucible winner reached the final of the World Open over the weekend, having made history in the last eight when he produced a break of 153, the highest in the sport’s history. He finished as the runner-up, losing to Thepchaiya Un-Nooh despite winning the opening four frames.
O’Sullivan was powerless to stop his Thai opponent from taking the next six frames to gain full control of the match. He ended up on the wrong side of a 10-7 scoreline but was happy with the way he played during the tournament as a whole. Speaking after the final, the 50-year-old said it had given him renewed hope of performing well at the Crucible later this year.
« I can only take one day, one week at a time. I can’t look any further than a week at the moment, with my career, » said O’Sullivan.
« ‘I’ve not been playing for a reason, just because I haven’t had a game good enough to compete, so I’ve been trying to find that on the practice table and hopefully bring it to the match table.
‘I’ve had quite a good year, really. I felt like I played really quite good at the start of the season, better than I was, and then I had a dip for a couple of months. January and February wasn’t good and I thought: ‘Here we go’, but I’ve managed to pull it back a little bit.
« We’ll just see how it goes. I wasn’t even going to play in the World Championship 10 days ago because I was too scared. I felt like I would embarrass myself.
« But now I feel I probably will go, because I feel like I might pot a few balls. It’s not great, I’m not in a great, great place with it, but I’m better than I was maybe two weeks ago. »
O’Sullivan has pulled out of several high-profile tournaments over the last few years due to mental health reasons. However, it seems he will be ready to return to the Crucible when the time comes to chase an unprecedented eighth world title.
The Rocket was beaten by Thepchaiya Un-Nooh in the World Open final (Image: Getty)
He also spoke highly of Un-Nooh, insisting that he deserved to win the World Open final because he was producing a standard that was impossible to match.
« It’s been a positive week, » added O’Sullivan. « Thepchaiya was unbelievable, deserves his victory, he played much better than me today. I watched his game yesterday in the semi-finals, he was strong. I couldn’t go with that, he was far too good for me.
« My game’s not good enough to go to that level, simple as that. It used to be. Everyone’s played okay against me this week, so my game is good enough to beat players playing okay.
« I just can’t get to the potting angle of certain shots, I can play maybe 60-70 per cent of shots comfortably, but there’s other shots I just don’t have in my locker.
« When someone plays like that, I’m just one-dimensional, really. It limits what I can do and the amount of pressure I can put on my opponent. I just have to accept that’s how it is.
« On the whole I’m in a much better place now that I was in the last three years and I was two weeks ago. But it could easily fall apart and be in a bad place again soon. I’m just taking each day and week as it comes. Not getting too excited or too down. »
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